Masahiro Tanaka to the DL; Should he get Tommy John surgery?

With Tuesday’s news that Yankees ace Masahiro Tanaka is headed to the disabled list with tendinitis, the question remains of whether he should get Tommy John surgery. 

When Masahiro Tanaka elected to neglect Tommy John surgery last season and rest his elbow for approximately half of his first major league season, it seemed like a risk.

Many baseball experts questioned whether he and the New York Yankees might not just be better off with him getting the surgery, taking the 15-18 months to recover and come back stronger from there.

Tanaka returned to Spring Training this year convinced he’d made the correct move in declining the surgery and simply resting the elbow and regaining strength the natural way.

Less than a month into the 2015 major league season, those questions are going to come back to the surface. That’s because Tuesday the Yankees announced their prized Japanese hurler was once again headed to the disabled list.

In Spring Training, after throwing his first bullpen session, Tanaka said through an interpreter, “I feel it is absolutely healed (his torn UCL). I am absolutely fine.”

To be fair the new injury–a forearm strain and wrist tendinitis–is not the same exact injury. It’s theoretically possible that the new injury, which will keep him away from the mound for the Yankees for at least 15 days, is totally independent of the previous one.

He probably did feel fine in the Spring. There’s an old adage that no one knows his body better than the athlete himself.

If Tanaka thought he was okay then, he just may have been.

But it’s also plausible–perhaps even probable–that he was not, and was only trying to put on a bold face, hoping for the best and attempting to not fail the team who signed him to a major deal before the 2014 season after a wildly successful career in Japan.

As much as he wanted to be okay, he may not have been. And if we know anything about injuries, it’s that they often play off one another.

Sure he may have been okay enough to pitch fairly unrestricted to start this season, but there’s also ample evidence to suggest something was wrong and the he overcompensating for pain, which would then open up other areas of his arm to injury.

The good news is that Tanaka didn’t again tear his UCL. The minor strain and tendinitis should only require rest. But there’s also a history for other pitchers to experience such things and then end up needing the Tommy John surgery.

So the Yankees ought to be very careful to not rush him back. This time the team needs to make sure he is 100 percent healthy. Tanaka is no good to them on an operating table and in rehab.